


A Spot of Bother

by standbygo



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:11:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbygo/pseuds/standbygo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mrs. Hudson has a visitor, someone she had hoped and prayed to never see again.</p>
<p>"Hello, Lizzy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Spot of Bother

Mrs. Hudson popped the tray of scones into the oven and turned to the remaining dough on the counter. “And now for Dr. Watson’s,” she said to herself. Dr. Watson liked raisins in his scones, and Sherlock didn’t, so she always made two batches.

Terrible habit, talking to herself, but she had lived alone for so long and it kept her company. She didn’t tend to do it when the boys were at home upstairs, the sounds of their footsteps above often made it feel like they were right in the flat with her. But they were off out at the moment, on a case probably, given the bounce she had heard in Sherlock’s step on the stairs. 

“Hopefully they’ll be back while they’re still warm,” she said to the dough as she worked the raisins in. “Scones are always nicer when they’re warm. Should take up some butter too, can’t count on those boys to keep butter.”

She spoiled them rotten, she knew. She told them all the time that she wasn’t their housekeeper, then turned around and baked for them and tidied and hoovered and… ah well. She also really needed to stop calling them “the boys” – Sherlock was in his mid-thirties, and Dr. Watson had to be nearly forty. But she had no children herself, and sometimes she liked to pretend. 

Goodness knows how children of her own would have turned out, given that -  

She heard a scraping sound from the back of her flat and huffed with annoyance. Mrs. Turner _would_ let her cat run free, and it had simply ruined the screen on the back window. “Scat!” she called out, without breaking the rhythm of her kneading. 

“Stems on the raisins, honestly,” she muttered, picking out one, “I’ll never buy that brand again.”  She dusted the counter with flour and began to roll out the dough, her hands knowing how much pressure to apply to the rolling pin, how much flour to add without overdoing it. Even Mrs. Turner had to admit her scones were better than any baker’s. “Oh, should do another batch for her-”

“Hello, Lizzy.”

Mrs. Hudson froze. Sweat pinpricked along her forehead and down her back, like ants under her skin. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, it can’t be, it can’t, but that voice with its American drawl, she hadn’t heard it in years, she had tried so hard to forget it…

Her head turned by degrees, slowly, to her right, towards the voice, towards the back door of the kitchen, and air puffed out of her mouth and she somehow couldn’t pull any more air in. No, no, no, he was dead, they used the electric chair then, but there – there – 

She blinked through the blur of adrenalin in her eyes and looked at the man. Tall, broad across the shoulders, yes, blonde hair but not much left now and whitened, squared jawline, yes, brown eyes, yes – but no scar across the right brow as Donald had, Donald didn’t have a mole on his chin, no, no – 

“Charlie,” she gulped out.

Charlie threw his head back and laughed, and the sound of it went straight to her knees. Oh, she knew that laugh, Donald would laugh like that when he’d made her nose bleed, when her lip was swollen out, the imprint of his ring on her cheek.

“The look on your face!” Charlie crowed. “You thought I was him, didn’t you? Oh, you were scared shitless, Lizzy, did you fill up your panties? Did you think Donnie was back from the _dead_?” He stopped laughing abruptly on the last word, and Mrs. Hudson felt old familiar terror settle into her gut.

“Charlie,” she said, wishing she could keep her voice steady, “I thought you were – you were-”

He spread his arms wide. “Free as a bird now, Lizzy. Time served. Though strictly speaking, I’m breaking my parole now, leaving the country and all. But I just _had_ to see you.”

“What… What…”

“What am I doing here? What do I want? Huh? You wanna know?” She watched him clench his jaw, saw the muscles twitch. “You took what’s mine, Lizzy. Mine. I want it back.”

Mrs. Hudson could only shake her head and move her lips, but no sound would come out. She watched the pretense of amusement bleed out of him, and his anger rise.

“Donnie was stupid. My own brother, my twin, was stupid. Everybody said we were the same, but he was stupid. He should have known better, and the feds caught him. They caught him, but not because the feds were smart. Oh no. They caught him because you yapped. His own wife. You yapped, and then you brought that faggot friend of yours into it, the one with the stupid limey name, and they caught him, and they _fried_ him, and it’s all. Your. Fault.”

Her breath came out of her in gasps and her whole body was shaking. The boys, she found herself thinking frantically, the boys will come, just like Sherlock did before, when the American thugs hurt her, he came and he knocked the man out, outwitted him and knocked him down, and Dr. Watson has his gun, the gun he thinks she doesn’t know about but she just doesn’t mention it, Dr. Watson and Sherlock will…

No they won’t, she realizes. They won’t come because they’re out. They may not come back for hours. 

“You got all the money, didn’t you, Lizzy? The feds froze the family accounts when we were arrested and after Donnie died you got everything, didn’t you? And you ran like a rabbit back here. I couldn’t do a thing, could I, stuck in Florida State Prison, until it was all over. It’s taken me a while to find you, Lizzy. And oh my,” Charlie smiled with cruelty in the corners of his mouth, “I’m going to enjoy this.”

“Charlie,” she gasps out. “Charlie, I don’t have the money anymore, I bought this house, all the money’s in the house, I take lodgers, London’s expensive, I can’t, there’s no way-”

“I don’t care about the fucking money!” he screams, and she jumps, and her voice leaps back down her throat. His voice lowers back down to a snarl. “No, we’re going to have a little talk – a chat, isn’t that what you limeys say? – a chat about, about, about loyalty. Family loyalty. And obedience. Wives should obey their husbands, right Lizzy? Don’t you think? Not sell them out to the feds and take the money, _my_ money, and run away. Right?”

He takes a step forward, and Mrs. Hudson sees his fingers gather into a fist. “So we’ll have a little chat, Lizzy, and then, I think,” and his eyes took on a glint that was horrifyingly familiar, “then I’ll see if I can figure out what my brother ever saw in you.”

A door inside Mrs. Hudson’s mind shuts with a clang. No. No, she thinks. I cannot, I will not let Charlie Hudson touch me. No. 

She backs up slowly until her back bumps the counter, and her hands come up to the counter to support her, behind her back. She feels the grit of the flour against her palm. 

Somewhere behind that closed metal door in her mind, Mrs. Hudson suddenly remembers Dr. Watson, after the incident with the CIA, taking her aside, looking serious.

“You and I have something in common,” he had said. “We’re not big people, and that often means that big people think they can push us around. They underestimate us. But there’s ways that we can make sure that doesn’t happen. May I-”

And suddenly everything he said to her is crystal clear, everything he showed her, and she knew, she knew what to do. 

Her hand closes around as much flour as she can in her right hand, and before she can think about it she flings the flour in Charlie’s eyes. The white cloud blinds him, goes up his nose and before he has time to snort it out, before he can blink the powder out of his eyes, she crowds up close to him and grabs the first two fingers of his right hand with her left fist, her right hand grabbing his forearm, and she pushes the fingers back and back until his knees buckle and she pushes back a little more and she hears a snap and Charlie screams. And she reaches back with her right hand and grabs the rolling pin and smashes it down across the back of his skull and Charlie Hudson goes down. 

~~~

“These raisins are just awful, terrible quality,” Mrs. Hudson says. “I’ll try some candied fruit for Mrs. Turner’s batch, that might be nice.”

The oven timer rings, and she pulls some shortbread cookies out. One by one she sets them on the cooling rack. “These Teflon sheets are just marvellous. Look at that, they just slide off.”

She hears the rattle of keys in the front door, hears Sherlock’s deep voice, hears Dr. Watson laugh briefly. 

“Oh good,” she says, “the boys are home.”

She looks down at Charlie, who is lying on his stomach with his hands tied behind him and then looped to his ankles. He makes a strangled noise, muffled by the tea towel stuffed in his mouth. 

“Just a moment, Charlie,” Mrs. Hudson says, wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ll be right back. I’m sure Sherlock will be pleased to see you again. And I can’t wait to introduce you to Dr. Watson. Lovely man.”

She steps to the door of her flat, opens it and leans out. “Sherlock, dear, Dr. Watson? Would you mind coming in for a moment?”

She glances back at Charlie, who is squirming wildly, but the blue parcel string she tied him with holds firm and doesn’t slip. She turns back to the hallway.

“Only I had a spot of bother while you were out.”

 

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> YouTube has hundreds of videos on women's self defense, which were very helpful for this story. Check some out for yourself. Everyone can be a BAMF.


End file.
